Monday, October 27, 2014

We have been heavy coffee
drinkers for over 40 years and always believed that we could not function without
our daily mega-dose of caffeine. That changed this summer when we started
taking supplements of iodine in the form of Lugols Solution. The iodine gave us so much energy that we had
to cut back on our morning coffee to keep from being too hyper. Even our daily square
of dark chocolate ritual started feeling uncomfortable from the caffeine and
sugar rush. We were astonished that we
no longer needed caffeine to get out of bed and keep going during the
day. We drank less and less every week and after a couple of months the coffee
started tasting awful, so we stopped drinking it entirely. Now we are living without caffeine.

Life is very different without
caffeine. The days used to rush by us so fast that we could not keep up.
Now it feels like everything has slowed down and is in slow motion. We
notice everything; the sun rise, the wind, the saturation of colors in the ocean,
and the changes in the spectrum of light during the day. Caffeine
constricts the blood flow to the brain and causes people to focus on more
immediate tasks. The extra blood flow we are getting is making us more
aware of our environment.

Our daily coffee kept us going
but it also made us jumpy, nervous and hyper. Caffeine increases the
stress hormone cortisol in the body. All that cortisol made the news much more upsetting. We are more calm.
We are focused on our own life and not as distracted by the global
conflicts. It is wonderful to have our minds working on making good
things happen and not focused on how bad things might go.

Our workouts in the gym are
easier. Caffeine constricts the blood to the muscles. With the additional
blood flow, weights feel lighter. Caffeine can also prevent you from
building muscle and although we may be imagining it, it does feel like we are
getting stronger.

At night, we really notice
the lack of caffeine. We used to be hyped up in the evening and drank
wine to help us unwind and relax. Now, when
the sun goes down we feel ourselves winding down quickly. We used to struggle to get up in the morning and
now we wake up early, before sun rise.

We would have never have
guessed that life without caffeine was possible let alone so enjoyable!

Eating carbohydrates causes
glucose (blood sugar) levels to rise and the body to produce insulin to store
any excess glucose as glycogen in the liver. When the insulin level goes
down, the stored glycogen is broken down into glucose for energy. The
process of glycogen breaking down produces CO2 which is released through
breathing. Exercise uses the stored glycogen faster and increases the concentration
of CO2 in the blood making it more acidic. The increased acidity can cause Uric
acid in the blood to start precipitating out into the needle like crystals that
cause gout. Exercise causes rapid breathing to rid of the body of CO2 and
can make you breathless.

However, there is a form of
fuel other than glucose. If there is no
glucose available, the liver will convert fat to ketones for energy. Ketones are burned differently and produce
much less CO2 than glycogen so you can exercise more before you are out of
breath. There are other benefits to ketogenic energy including better
efficiency of the muscles, like the heart. The average person can only
store about 2000 calories as glycogen and although it can be quickly converted
to energy, once it is gone the muscles and brain stop functioning. We
have seen this happen to Ironman athletes in Kona. When the body is using ketones
for fuel, it can convert up to 40,000 calories a day, 20 times more than from glucogen.

We have been on the ketogenic
diet for almost 6 months. After the adaption
period, we are feeling more energetic than ever. We
love not being hungry all the time and have made great progress on our weight
loss. The best part is no gout attacks, even though it has been
very hot and humid this year and we have been exercising more.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

We sometimes wonder why it took ships from the west so long to find the Hawaiian Islands. European ships had reached
China in 1517, hundreds of years before
Captain Cook found the remote islands in 1778.
Some of the mystery was solved for us when we recently learned about how
John Harrison’s clock assisted Captain Cook.

Longitude
is an entertaining movie about John Harrison who invented the marine
chronometer in the late 1700’s. At the time latitude (the distance of a ship
north and south of the equator) could be determined from the sun or stars using
a sexton, however, there was no method to determine the ship’s longitude (the
east – west location) in the ocean. Ships navigated by following the
coastline, which worked when exploring Africa and Asia, but was not helpful
when crossing the Atlantic to the Americas or crossing the Pacific Ocean.

So
many ships were lost at sea or destroyed by crashing into reefs, that in 1714,
the British Parliament offered a huge prize to anyone who could find a method
to accurately determine a ship’s longitude.

The
Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England was the reference longitude of zero
degrees, called the Prime Meridian. The sun
moves west from the Prime Meridian at a rate of 15 degrees each hour. If
the time in Greenwich is known at exactly noon
on a ship at sea (measured using a sextant to determine the exact moment that
the sun reaches its highest point in the sky) the number of degrees of
longitude the sun has crossed from the Prime Meridian to the ship can be
calculated and the navigator can determine the ship’s longitude.The problem is easily solved by having a
clock on board the ship with Greenwich Time, however, in the 1700’s no clock
existed that could keep accurate time over a long period or deal with
temperature changes and a ship’s movement.

John
Harrison was a carpenter and clock maker. Before starting on the
longitude challenge, he had already made several inventions that improved
clocks including the "gridiron pendulum", which kept clocks from
losing or gaining time due to temperature changes and the
"grasshopper" escapement which was a device for the step-by-step
release of a clock's driving power which required no oiling.

Harrison
started working on a marine clock in 1730 in hopes of winning the prize.
“Longitude”, based on the book, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel, tells the fascinating story of
John Harrison and his son who spent decades working on perfecting a marine
chronometer and proving it at sea. Harrison’s first creation, called H1,
was a monstrosity weighing almost 100 pounds. In 1759 he finished his
fourth version, called H4, which was a complete redesign and the size of a
large pocket watch. Harrison was eventually awarded the prize by the
British Parliament in 1773 and recognized for having solved the Longitude
problem.

In
1772, when Captain Cook sailed from England on his second voyage he had aboard
a replica of Harrison’s H4 chronometer
made by Larcum Kendall called the K1.
Cook was able to navigate the Pacific Ocean using the K1 and discovered new
islands including New Caledonia. Cook was a superstar on his return to
England in 1775 receiving honors, appointments and a promotion. The K1
clock was exceptionally accurate during the entire voyage and Cook referred to
the watch as “...our faithful guide
through all the vicissitudes of climates”.

John
Harrison died in 1776, the same year Cook left for his third voyage to explore
the Pacific. On that voyage, in January 1778, Cook found the Hawaiian
Islands where he met his demise. When the
ships returned to England, their report made the Hawaiian Islands and its
longitude in the middle of the Pacific Ocean known to the rest of the world.

Having
an accurate pocket watch, invented by Harrison, on board may have been partially
or even completely responsible for Cook finding Hawaii. It certainly allowed all the other Captains
to navigate to the islands after learning the location. It makes us wonder what
small inventions are in the works today that may alter our world in ways we may
not be able to grasp.